By JASON GUYER
On Super Bowl Sunday, I, like 103 million other people, was watching a great football game. My team lost, but that’s bound to happen when you go to as many Super Bowls as the New England Patriots do.
Although the New England loss was a surprise for some, there was at least one other surprise during the Super Bowl. Among the many new commercials aired during the game, something people often look forward to, there was a movie trailer.
To be more specific, there was a surprise movie trailer for “The Cloverfield Paradox ” — a film few knew was being made and even fewer knew was being released.
In one of the greatest marketing schemes you’ll see, “The Cloverfield Paradox,” released its trailer during the Super Bowl. It was a teaser that set up the film’s release directly after the Super Bowl.
Netflix hit a home run with that marketing ploy. It was genius.
Then comes the second, more important, part. Does the film live up to that kind of hype?
“The Cloverfield Paradox” tells a story that’s set in the near future. It centers on a team of astronauts led by Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ava Hamilton and Daniel Brühl as Schmidt. While on a space station, they make a terrifying discovery that challenges all they know about the fabric of reality.
Mbatha-Raw and Brühl are fantastic. Mbatha-Raw’s performance had me captivated and Brühl left me wanting him to have more screen time.
Watching the Super Bowl trailer, I had two reactions that made me want to see this Cloverfield installment. Mbatha-Raw’s opening lines in the trailer, “Whatever you’re doing, stop!” was fully engaging and attention-getting, especially during something I actually do not want to stop watching, the Super Bowl.
It was just too bad that in “The Cloverfield Paradox” her words are not as poignant. Whoever cut that trailer did a magnificent job. There should be an Academy Award for trailer editing.
The second reason I needed to see “The Cloverfield Paradox” was Brühl. He didn’t say much, but I saw him in the background and said to myself, “Oh my God, that’s Daniel Brühl!” Then I knew I had to see “The Cloverfield Paradox.”
Brühl is one of my favorite actors. However, it is a bit unsettling when you see a favorite and your response is, they should not have done this movie.
“The Cloverfield Paradox” is a jumble of good sci-fi moments and bad sci-fi moments. Scenes like the crawling arm, the creepy first time the crew meets Mina Jensen, played by Elizabeth Debicki, and the line, “We lost the Earth” are the movie’s finer moments.
Then there are some SyFy channel-style bad moments, like how the arm gets separated from its owner and starts crawling, or the “I’m going to get you” magnetic space glue.
In the end, “The Cloverfield Paradox” provides the same outcome as its catalyst, the Super Bowl. Great, even epic, offense (actors) and just as epically bad defense (story).
The top-name actors like Mbatha-Raw and Brühl are good in their roles and they make the film. The others often seem like they should be in some SyFy channel flunky, maybe they will be in the future. “Sharknado 10.5” perhaps.
Just like any good football team knows, offense only gets you so far. You need a good defense as well. Story is a film’s defense. Good acting can catapult great writing and great writing can catapult bad acting. Unfortunately, great acting can’t overcome bad writing. “The Cloverfield Paradox” suffers from mediocre storytelling and even worse, mediocre science.
There could have been one saving grace for “The Cloverfield Paradox” and that is the Cloverfield mythology. Does “The Cloverfield Paradox” give answers to some of the Cloverfield mythology? It gives one: How it started. Then “The Cloverfield Paradox” creates many more questions than it answers.
“The Cloverfield Paradox” mostly does what the Cloverfield films have done best: Just giving a tease or glimpse of what exactly is happening on Earth.
How good can a film with some good and some bad acting, bad storytelling and very few answers to its predecessors’ questions be? You may have a great offense and the game may be close, but you still lose.
Just like Tom Brady’s last-second heave to Rob Gronkowski, “The Cloverfield Paradox” comes up just short.
IRATE SCORE: 1.5/5
Jason Guyer is an avid moviegoer and works in the Graphics Department at the Eagle Times. For questions or comments he can be emailed [email protected].
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